Leadership, Change, the Future: TOP SETH GODIN QUOTES FROM LINCHPIN

My latest Kindle read- Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin. Out of several hundred quotes I marked, here are my top quotes, organized under the categories of leadership, change, and the future:

LEADERSHIP

Leaders don’t get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin.

There’s no script for leadership. There can’t be.

“I don’t know what to do”—this one is certainly true. The question is, why does that bother you? No one actually knows what to do. Sometimes we have a hunch, or a good idea, but we’re never sure. The art of challenging the resistance is doing something when you’re not certain it’s going to work.

What does it take to lead? The key distinction is the ability to forge your own path, to discover a route from one place to another that hasn’t been paved, measured, and quantified. So many times we want someone to tell us exactly what to do, and so many times that’s exactly the wrong approach.

CHANGE

Real change rarely comes from the front of the line. It happens from the middle or even the back. Real change happens when someone who cares steps up and takes what feels like a risk. People follow because they want to, not because you can order them to.

Wikipedia and the shared knowledge of the Internet make domain knowledge on its own worth significantly less than it used to be. Today, if all you have to offer is that you know a lot of reference book information, you lose, because the Internet knows more than you do.

The executives in the record business, for example, loved their perfect business model. They were attached to their lifestyles and to the way their artist and fan relationships made them feel. When even a turnip could see that their business model was doomed, they soldiered on, apparently oblivious to the crumbling going on around them. Were they stupid? No. They were blinded by their attachment to the present and their fear of the future.

The newspaper industry can’t untangle news from paper, can’t see the difference between delivering the news around the world for free and putting it on a truck for shipment down the block. As long as each of these elements is seen as inseparable from the others, it’s impossible to untangle the future. That’s why outsiders and insurgents so often invent the next big thing—they don’t start with the tangled past.

THE FUTURE

The diamond cutter doesn’t imagine the diamond he wants. Instead, he sees the diamond that is possible.

The linchpin is able to invent a future, fall in love with it, live in it—and then abandon it on a moment’s notice.

Rockbridge Seminary students that have completed the fully online course “Leading Change,” may be helped by watching two brief videos in which Seth Godin explains WHY he wrote Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Part 1:

Part 2:

Read Seth Godin’s blog

Leader- look in the mirror if you dare

My wife Trish is a professional temp, working in all kinds of businesses usually as an administrative assistant. Over the twenty years she’s been doing this, she’s seen every type of company culture dysfunction. One of our favorite conversations is a debrief at the end of the day. 

A frequent phrase that pops up in these conversations is “top down.” In other words, to find the reason behind a dysfunctional company culture, look at the leader. 

It’s true. The leader, whoever has direct influence over an organization’s culture, will have his or her personhood imprinted onto that culture over time; the good, the bad, and the ugly. This doesn’t have to end in dysfunction, but to prevent it takes a leader who is humble, authentic, and approachable. Through the eyes of others, a leader can discover blind spots and make adjustments.

I’m thinking of a tool like the 360 degree arrogance assessment discussed in the Rockbridge Seminary online course, “Lead Like Jesus” (in the unit titled “The Heart of the Leader”). 

I won’t tell you what Trish thinks about her few temp assignments in churches and other religious organizations. The dysfunction is typically off the charts. It’s ugly. 

Thanks to Scott Williams for his 10 point “leadership look in the mirror” checklist on his blog “Big is the New Small“: 

The Good

• If your team is not scared to dream, fail & have fun (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team is self-motivated to produce excellent work (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team likes to have fun & truly like each other (Look In The Mirror)

The Bad

• If your team is scared to make decisions without your approval (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team settles for mediocrity and doesn’t demand excellence (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team members opportunities are limited because of age, gender or experience (Look In The Mirror)

The Ugly

• If your team dreads coming to work (Look In The Mirror)
• If you have high turnover (Look In The Mirror)
• If your team is unwilling to follow you (Look In the Mirror)

If you are oblivious to all of these points… ask your team to tell you what they see in you, when they look at you in the mirror…